


dear regret

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Series: Less than 12 days of Xmas [3]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Does anyone actually spell it "Fay"?, M/M, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two beginnings and an end, but not in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear regret

**Author's Note:**

> There is no single moment of loss, there is  
> an amassing.  
> 
> 
> Stacie Cassarino, "Snowshoe to Otter Creek"

This is how they start:

Swearing, furious, Fai abandons the sopping wet mess of his bathroom to answer the door of his apartment, breathless, his smile barely pinned in place. His downstairs neighbor doesn't even blink at his half-fallen ponytail, sopping clothes, and water-speckled glasses – all obvious signs of water-induced stress. His neighbor just says "you're leaking" and, when Fai only laughs weakly in response, shoulders his way in.

His name is Kurogane. He's twenty-four to Fai's thirty and handsome in a shocking way, once Fai has gathered up enough wits to see anything beyond the chaos of his bathroom.

Fai offers to buy him coffee in thanks for his heroism and basic plumbing skill. Kurogane declines, saying Fai owes him dinner at least.

Fai buys him so many dinners.

 

This is how they end:

Fai gets a promotion at work and Kurogane teaches more and more classes at the dojo.

They have fights where Fai is horrible to Kurogane, snide and condescending. They have fights where Kurogane yells so loudly they both get cited with noise complaints. They have fights where they don't say a word to each other.

On their three year anniversary, a bottle of wine empty between them and a second one incoming, Fai looks at Kurogane and realizes he doesn't love him the same way he used to. His chest aches with the realization all the way through dinner, and on the ride back home, and when they kiss it feels compulsory instead of wanted.

They break up that night, without any yelling or condescension, just the low simmer of resignation.

 

This is how they begin again:

For a guy with a few dozen kendo trophies, Kurogane always did have horrible timing. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, to see him at the worst possible moment. It's only severe lack of caffeine dampening his reflexes that keeps Fai from bolting as soon as he catches sight of him.

Fai's hand spasms and he misses his shopping basket, drops a carton of creamer on his foot instead. _Nothing to see here_ , he thinks desperately as he crouches to retrieve it, _just one more idiot_. He radiates it, willing it into existence, as if he can wrap himself up in a cloak of such self-loathing that no one will be able to see him at all. Their eyes will just skid right over him, not process him at all, like so many other horrors.

He knows Kurogane's stance just like he knows every other thing about him, every inch of him, even the ones he had to all but get up on tiptoe to reach. He doesn't have to look up to know that it's Kurogane now standing over him, just has to see the spread of his feet, catch a whiff of cedar and cypress, because of course he still wears the same cologne. Still wears those horrible Doc Martens too, damn him. And damn himself, too, for remembering because:

_He knew everything about Kurogane._

"You going to stay down there?" Kurogane asks, and Fai adds the sound of his voice to the things that can still hurt. Surprise, surprise.

Fai stitches on his ~~least convincing~~ smile as he stands, dented creamer clutched safely in his hand. "Kuro!"

Kurogane does an unsubtle sweep of his person, from man bun to Keds, with meaningful pauses at both. He doesn't need to guess at what Kurogane reads in all the details in between. He wants to wither away to nothing and float away on a chilly draft from the dairy cooler.

At thirty-five, all Fai has going for him is a cat that he's pretty sure resents his work schedule, a leaky shower, a growing collection of mail-order catalogs, and a beleaguered disappointment in the "gay" category on PornHub.

At thirty he had a kitten, a job that hadn't yet rolled him under, a leaky shower, not a single mail-order catalog, and Kurogane.

"You look–" Kurogane says, and Fai only barely restrains the urge to lob the creamer at him and run. Instead he drops it finally into his basket, where it knocks about all the other sad and telling contents.

"Happy to see you!" Fai says. Kurogane's forehead crinkles when he frowns, which would have been impossible to forget considering how often he saw it, and which he blithely ignores. Just like riding a bicycle. "What a surprise. I heard you moved."

Kurogane frowns a bit more. "I–"

"Again, I mean. Souma said you'd gone to Japan. Are you back for the holiday? I'm sure everyone is so happy to see you!"

Kurogane scowls. "You talk to Souma?"

Fai waves away the first hint of something growly in Kurogane's voice. "Facebook."

He hasn't actually spoken to Souma since those awful days at the last ragged end of their relationship, when they needed an intermediary for the exchange of things that had migrated from apartment to apartment. A half dozen volumes of Kurogane's manga in exchange for Fai's french press; all the remnants of each other packed up and dropped off, scorn and resentment and loss scattered in like those were burdens they could pass on.

"I moved back."

Fai wilts under the weight of Kurogane's gaze and lack of coffee. It takes an almost monumental effort to perk himself back up. "Well it's been lovely–"

Kurogane hooks a finger over the edge of Fai's shopping basket, weighs him down just enough to keep him from making a break for it. "Wait," he says.

"Yes?"

"That's my shirt."

Fai's smille twitches.

Because this is destined to be the most painfully awkward morning of his life, it is, undeniably, Kurogane's shirt. One of those things he was meant to pack up and return to its proper owner. It's too large on Fai by a long shot and, more tellingly, has the words _2010 Budo Summer Camp_ emblazoned in bright red across the front. But it's so nicely overlarge on him, the perfect shirt in which to roll around miserably in bed.

"You must have left it in the laundry." Fai shifts the basket to obscure the wear on the screen printing. "Anyway, I've had it longer that you have, by now."

Kurogane's answering stare is unwavering.

"Besides," Fai continues, "you didn't give my shampoo back, or the blanket from the couch."

"No, I didn't."

Fai frowns.

Kurogane shrugs. "I couldn't get rid of you even if I wanted to."

"You did want to," Fai points out. It's only fair. The sight and scent of Kurogane might still be as sharp as a knife in the dark, but that doesn't make what happened between them more relevant now, just sadder.

"I wanted something."

"Have you found it yet?"

Kurogane looks down into Fai's shopping basket, at the logo on his pilfered sweatshirt, at the legitimate mess of Fai's hair grown too long.

"Maybe," he says.


End file.
